That Day I Stumbled Into a Restaurant

Eóin Hogan

(11133805)

It’s been three months since me and my girlfriend got together, so as the sappy old-school romantics that we like to think we are, and spurred on by a conveniently gifted €20 gift card, we decided to celebrate with a dinner together.

Fancy little gift card

                I’m no food expert and my tastes tend to be quite picky so you can pretty much disregard this entire post if you’re looking for advice on your dining habitats or an X amount of star ratings. I’m just giving my own personal account.

                So we arrive. We got a cosy table towards the back, after an awkward request at the till for a table for two (I wasn’t even sure if that was the conventional request, I judged purely on time-classic sitcoms and cheesy romantic blockbusters.) It was cleverly designed to be both inclusive in general room’s environment but also private enough that there was no need to be glancing over the shoulders for peeking Toms; a nice feature.

                There is a downstairs to Chocolat but I suspect it’s for reservations only and I can judge it solely on the picture’s on their website. From what I can tell though, both the atmosphere of up and downstairs match. The lighting was entirely ambient and relaxing orange and deep brown tones dominated. A very high class and relaxing environment for a surprisingly reasonable price range.

A Cosy, Personal Setting

               

The owners of other popular Limerick restaurants such as The Jazmine Palace and Chinese take-away Wokking boast a pleasing and exquisite menu with many words I don’t understand and more yet that intimidate my ignorant mind.

Just look at those options, fancy no?

 

I didn’t order any of these, I got Spaghetti.

It was yummy. 

Now, I had been excited to go for dinner, but after learning that The Jasmine Palace and Chocolat were of the same ownership, my excitement must have taken some dangerous meds because it went wild. Why? Simple. The one and only time I visited the Jamine was a few months back to celebrate my two brothers’ birthdays (being only 3 days apart). I ordered a Fanta, but was given something else, since which I have dubbed “Red Nectar”. It was wonderful, I’d never tasted a mineral drink so exotic and interesting. I was close to asking for glasses of Red Nectar to the value of the meal and going hungry for the night. Surely, I thought, surely Chocolat would have this drink also; surely the owners had some deal with the manufacturer or some vendetta against the Coca Cola Company that they didn’t stock Fanta.

But alas, I was mistaken. I forked out 3 euro for a 350 ml bottle of plain old Fanta, should have just gone to Tesco.

All in all though, it was a great night and a perfect binding to the last three months of my life. I can look forward to more dinings in Chocolat and more months with my fantastic girlfriend...so long as she doesn’t dump me when she realises I was more excited about Red Nectar than my evening with her...

 Well ain’t she lovely?